Hi Ilana,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 2: I have 2 or 3 emerging interests but am unsure how to figure out which one to pursue .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were universalism, achievement, and benevolence.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.
You said your top three talents were NA, NA, and NA.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to get over my ex .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Do my thesis readings every day .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said I can brag .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Procrastination .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I get back from class and make dinner, I will do my thesis readings .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Spanish .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt when receiving critical feedback, and when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling nearly an extreme amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being being unemployed and single .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to .
In one word, you said it made you feel Sentimental .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Success is a journey but it can also be a destination |
| Interest is the key ingredient |
| Effort matters more and personalities can change |
| Having a goal isn't enough, you need an intention implementation |
| Practice practice practice |
| Don't take failure too personally |
| Stress can be good |
| Willpower is stupid |
| Expectations are the secret sauce |
| Do good things but not too many good things |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Coby Melkin |
| A quality that I think Ilana exemplifies well is authenticity. I am impressed by her ability to be real and honest about topics discussed in class and during group conversations. I think that the rest of our team and I have learned a lot from her in general and specifically as it relates to this important quality. I personally strive to be more authentic and often feel that there is a lot of room for me to grow, so it was great to have somebody in our team who modeled this quality.
I found her discovery project about DJing quite fascinating. I would have imagined that DJing is not too complex, it’s just pressing a few buttons here and there. During Ilana‘s presentation, my assumption was certainly challenged as she explained the complexity and nuances surrounding different machines. It was nice to hear about her progress on the discovery projects over the course of the semester, and I was very impressed by the skill she developed in this creative, artistic passion. I wish a knew how to make a mix for my baby nephew! |
| Quan Dao |
| Ilana’s openness and candidness was always refreshing. Ilana always had interesting personal stories to share in our group check-in which a lot of the times helped kick-started the conversation. Moreover, Ilana never hesitated to voice her opinion. Many times, those insights enriched the content we learned in-class, which led to a better learning experience for everyone.
More importantly, your Discovery Project on DJ-ing was just as insightful and exciting. I could definitely relate to the struggles you mentioned dealing with the learning curve of such challenging activity. However, through that, I think you showed Grit and commitment, which was the key of this class beyond just acquiring the skills. Overall, well done and I hope to see you master your DJ skills in the future! |
| Abigail So |
| Dear Ilana,
I am very glad that you were on my team this year. I most appreciate your insightful comments, witty humor, and fun personality. You are "not like the other girls." I appreciate the engaging conversations we had when we were completing activities with a partner. I truly learned much from you—your habits, work ethic, future goals, and past Penn experiences. I especially enjoyed our 20-minute breakout discussions because you always had the best examples to give. Lastly, I liked how you never let our group discussions go quiet. Whenever we did not know what to talk about, you asked follow-up questions which helped build the group dynamic.
Your discovery project was very compelling; I never expected you to DJ! I remember you telling me, while brainstorming, that one of your ideas was to DJ. My main takeaway from your presentation was: it's harder than it looks. You spoke a lot about the difficulty of editing a track or creating your own, which I did not expect. Whenever I listen to music, it is natural to think that the track was created in one-sitting without any mistakes. I was also very impressed with your speaking skills! I appreciated that you were truly passionate about DJing and making something that you could call your own. I would love to listen to one of your tracks in the future!
I wish you the best! And I also hope that you get your bike back! |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.